After all the time I spent securing an upgrade on my Los Angeles-Denver dinner flight this afternoon, it turns out I did not take the flight. No bumps, no drama–I just had too much work to do and could not get away from LA in time (with a good conscience). That meant another use of United’s confirmed same-day change policy.
At any given time my team and I are working on an handful avalanche of award bookings for clients and I was literally right in the middle of booking a complex vacation for a large family (we’re talking 14 one-way tickets…) when the time rolled around to leave for the airport. With no internet or telephone service onboard UA and only a short layover in Denver I had to find a solution: the holds expired at midnight and I could not chance losing this space. Calling AA to try to extend the holds would have taken just as much time as ticketing the awards, so I started looking for alternate flight options. I suppose I could have handed the award off to a colleague, but I hate it when they do that to me, so I did not.
Thankfully, United made it easy today. There was space on the redeye flight tonight and a gracious check-in agent at LAX swapped out my LAX-DEN-PHL flights for the LAX-PHL redeye. She was able to keep me in first class as well, an added bonus that I was actually willing to forsake. For those who might accuse me of stealing someone’s upgrade–worry not. First class was booked 6/8 with no one on the waitlist.
So now I am camped out in the United Club for a seven hour stay and I’ve got my tickets issued–well some of them–and will conclude this post to get back to work.
Once again, United allows me to be flexible when I don’t buy a flexible ticket. No complaints from me…
Leave a Reply